In Our Time
If you're looking for a meaty podcast experience, I recommend In Our Time, a program from BBC Radio 4.
It's an hour-long program hosted by Melvyn Bragg, usually with three guests, that has enough time to delve pretty deeply into a variety of topics. One of the things that is most impressive is the unbelievably wide breadth of topics, some of which are quite interesting, others things you just haven't heard of before.
Recent episode subjects include:
- Bismark
- Anaesthetics - from ether frolics to pain-free surgery
- The Opium Wars
- St. Hilda
- The History of Optics
They also have a cool subject cloud.
(subscribe to podcast)
10 Principles of Economics
A hilarious explanation of Mankiw's 10 principles of economics. And here I thought I'd never apply the tags 'economics' and 'comedy' to the same post.
via Lifedev.net
The Social Dynamics of Binary Solar Systems
A recent study reports that binary-star planetary systems may be equally likely as single star systems to develop. As far as the geometry, the Space.com article three possibilities, based primarily on the distance separating the stellar pair. A close in pair might have a planetary system orbiting the center of gravity of the two stars, (giving you a Tatooine sunset). A pair with medium separation may be too unstable for planetary formation at all. And the third option is that the two stars may orbit far enough apart that they each have their own planetary systems in orbit around them.
It's this third option that I find most intriguing. Just as the Moon hangs tantalizingly close, in our sky, just asking to be flown to, imagine there was another entire solar system, a second sun 3-4 times the distance to pluto away. A good distance to be sure, but much more within reach than even Alpha Centauri. A tempting distance, especially if there were planets in it's habitable zone.
How much more eager would we be in that scenario to develop a real long-distance spaceflight capability? If there were colonies, the politics of the added distance would make it a much different dynamic than an outpost on Mars. Interesting stuff.
Labels: space
Verbal vs. Visual : One at a time please
However, it is noted that diagrams or images are still useful, it's just the practice of reading point form slides which is detrimental. I'd thus note that what they've really found is that bad presentation slides hinder retention, not slides in general.
via Slashdot
Labels: visualization
Is violence declining?
- The state's monopoly on violence and disinterested penalties for aggression eliminate the need for constant deterrence and vendettas on an individual basis.
- Violence is more common when life is perceived as cheap. As standards of living improve world wide, a higher value is placed on life.
- Non zero-sum games such as trade make others progressively more valuable alive than dead.
I'll be interested to see if his next book moves into topics beyond language.
via Arts & Letters Daily
Space Logistics
EOS had nothing to do with flying around arcade-like, and everything to do with constructing space stations from a variety of modules, dividing them between commercial and research output. I'm embarassed to say I spent hours with a calculator determining the optimum prices to set for the various products to match market movements. Eventually you could develop more advanced technology, and send spacecraft eerily reminiscent of Discovery from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 to the different planets. As far as I could tell the end result seemed to be finding life on Europa, but that took hours of floppy disk swapping.
Project Space Station always seemed to end with having too little budgetary resources to maintain your space activities. This was frustrating, but ironically probably made it the most realistic of the two.
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via Boing Boing
Labels: media, space, visualization
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Labels: admin
Statistics Visualization
A fascinating presentation at TED from Hans Rosling, discussing demographic statistics with his visualization software. Really, you have to watch the video. If you don't have twenty minutes, the hightlight is here.
On a side note, apparently Dr. Rosling is also one of only five sword swallowers in Sweden.
Labels: visualization